Assembly and machining expendable materials or tools, e.g. screws, rivets or sawblades are kept in stock in cabinets or separate stores as a function of the size of the organization processing them. However, quite apart from tying up capital, this also involves stockkeeping and at least certain administrative measures for checking the existing stock and for reordering. Frequently, excessive stocks of certain types are kept, which are finally not used or not used in an optimum manner.
Product selling machines are also known, but are only suitable for delivering a very limited number of different products. In one known automatic selling machine of this type (DE-OS 15 74 236) there are e.g. eight storage planes, each plane containing identical products.
In another known apparatus of this type (US-A-4 811 764) several rotatable magazines are superimposed, each magazine also containing only a single product.
In addition, mechanical cabinets with a continuous circulatory lift construction are known (DE-C2-30 48 394), in which with the aid of an indicator system, it is indicated in which compartment a desired product is located. This compartment can be moved to a specific removal point. However, in this case, access is always possible simultaneously to a large number of compartments, so that such an apparatus would not be suitable as a product selling machine.
In addition, a product selling or vending machine is known, which is connected by means of a telephone line to a central monitoring location (CH-AS-61 20 24). The latter is able to establish whether the selling machine has a fault or is empty. The goods are constituted by tickets, so that the machine need only have two product types, namely tickets and coins. Before the tickets are removed, they are paid for by feeding in coins.
Also, in the case of bank cash dispensers, the product availability, namely banknotes, is very limited. Admittedly, a debit calculation takes place by means of a control room, but it is only necessary to deduct the value and there is no need to additionally calculate a specific article.